LYNC Responds to to the WCA’s Selective Vaccination Program to Ensure General Conference in 2022
Hear this, leaders of the house of Jacob, rulers of the house of Israel, you who reject justice and make crooked all that is straight, who build Zion with bloodshed and Jerusalem with injustice! Her officials give justice for a bribe, and her priests teach for hire. Her prophets offer divination for silver, yet they rely on the Lord, saying, “Isn’t the Lord in our midst? Evil won’t come upon us!” Micah 3:9-11 (Common English Bible)
“You shall not pervert justice. You shall not show partiality, and you shall not accept a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and subverts the cause of the righteous. Deut. 16:19 (Common English Bible).
While our planet grapples with the global inequity of the covid pandemic where millions of people especially in the Global South lack access to life saving vaccines, and millions of United Methodists and their communities suffer in health, leaders in the Wesley Covenant Association have offered to pay all expenses and facilitate delegate travel to the 2022 General Conference so that it can take place without further delay. The prophet Micah cautions that justice will not be established through suspect transactional gestures. Beguiling incentives aimed at promoting peace in Jerusalem will not make crooked ways straight.
Why this gesture of surgical precision from the WCA, and why now? The primary purpose is to secure Central Conference presence and presumably enough votes to ratify The Protocol, essentially clearing the way for the WCA’s financially beneficial schism from The United Methodist Church. But what about delegate family members and the villages and cities they come from? What kind of class, ethnic, or tribal implications are created when most of these delegates will be the only person vaccinated in an entire community? How many delegates would be willing to leave their communities for a month, eschewing their commitments in order to receive a vaccine? What does this say about the commitment of The UMC to healthcare as a human right that ought to be available to all? And what does this offer say about the U.S. Church’s perception of United Methodists from the Global South? The kin-dom of God must not perpetuate deep divisions in a zero-sum game.
We applaud those who have already brought to light the dangers posed by this selective vaccination program. We also give thanks for our bishops’ leadership in opposition to this initiative.
This offer thinly veils a familiar racist and colonial trope: provide access to essential medical care when it is in the interest of the colonizer; privilege the select few at the expense of the many; claim with self-satisfaction, “Isn’t the LORD in our midst?” Surely, we have not forgotten the strategies employed by the precursors to the WCA: clandestine and covert distribution of cell phones to Central Conference delegates with instructions on “preferred votes” or U.S sponsors outside the General Conference paying all expenses for Central Conference delegates to vote in their interest. These political maneuverings trade material goods for the hope of desired outcomes, eroding trust and our collective responsibility to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.
It is our moral obligation to decolonize The United Methodist Church and to work together for unconditionally fair and equitable access of precious vaccines to all – and especially the people of the Global South, who otherwise needlessly suffer the personal and collective trauma of illness. The Gospel demands just and honest acts of faith. Likewise, we pray without ceasing for the good of all delegates and the communities they represent, and we reject efforts by any party to manipulate outcomes at General Conference. We are determined to work together with persons of goodwill who also desire a just and peaceful resolution through the General Conference.
Members of the Love Your Neighbor Coalition
( Photo by Arek Socha, courtesy of Pixabay; graphic by Laurens Glass, UM News)